Dhaka: The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has decided to be tough in dealing with smuggled cigarettes and the ones in the market without brand-roll, aiming to boost the revenue collection from this sector.

NBR Chairman M Nojibur Rahman has given directives in this regard to its field-level offices to ensure the revenue collection, officials said.

According to an NBR investigation, smuggling of cigarettes from neighbouring countries and the use of fake band-roll and the reuse of the same for several times is causing a huge loss to the national exchequer.

‘The NBR chairman has issued an order to get tough against the use of fake band-roll and smuggling of cigarettes to achieve its revenue target of the current fiscal year,’ a senior NBR official told news agency UNB.

The revenue collection target for the 2016-17 fiscal from this sector has been fixed at Tk 20,000 crore.

According to the NBR investigation, smugglers are bringing into the country substandard cigarettes from Myanmar through Chittagong, Cox's Bazar and Bandarban border points depriving the government of huge revenue in duty and tax.

Besides, some regional cigarette-producing companies are using fake band-rolls and reusing the same to evade duties. ‘NBR field-level offices have been instructed to stay vigilant about it,’ the official said wishing to remain anonymous.

Allegations are there that some tobacco companies have long been using fake band-rolls and stamps to evade VAT. The Board has also asked the NBR field-level offices across the country to intensify their surveillance.
The NBR official said they have collected samples from the retail markets and checked those with the NBR-supplied ones.  "We've got some anomalies in this regard," the NBR senior official said.

It is not always possible for the NBR to check the band-rolls and stamps in all the shops of the markets for lack of manpower, according to the NBR official.

He also said a directive has been given to take necessary steps for realising tax from the respective companies, saying that some bidi and cigarette-producing companies under the Customs, Excise and VAT Commission rate are using fake band-rolls and stamps to evade tax.

The NBR also directed its VAT officials to inspect the production level to supply level for containing any sort of VAT and duty evasion.

According to the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate statistics, it seized 27,489 cartons of smuggled cigarettes from July 2013 to December 2015. The market price of these seized items was Tk 7 crore.

In 2015-16 fiscal, the NBR collected Tk 56,080 crore from the VAT and of the total amount Tk 16,690 crore came from cigarettes, which means 30 percent of the VAT comes from this sector while 11 percent of the total revenue collection comes from the same area.